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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

From Cormac McCarthy, author of “No Country For Old Men,” comes the highly anticipated big screen adaptation of the beloved, best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road. Academy Award®-nominee Viggo Mortensen (Best Actor, Eastern Promises, 2007) leads an all-star cast featuring Academy Award® winners Charlize Theron (Best Actress, Monster, 2003) and Robert Duvall (Best Actor, Tender Mercies, 1983), Guy Pearce and young newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee in this epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father (Mortensen) and his young son (Smit-McPhee) as they journey across a barren America that was destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm. A masterpiece adventure, The Road boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of – a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love.

Amazon.com

In many ways a close adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's grim novel, The Road dutifully plods through the basics of McCarthy's nightmarish post-apocalyptic landscape: a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) try to survive as they trek along through the sodden, sunless remnants of some awful disaster. Scrounging for food and huddling together to stay warm, they spend most of their time trying to avoid the cannibalistic marauders who roam the highways. The film strikingly demonstrates that McCarthy's book was almost entirely dependent on his extraordinary language for its literary life; the story, such as it is, is so skeletal and spare it doesn't translate well into movie terms. The Proposition director John Hillcoat brings his grungy physicality to the material, so in the matters of the damp clothes and starved bodies and cheerless forests, the movie rings true. But the longer it trudges on, the more it seems a thoroughly conventional conclusion is at the end of this dystopian tale. The Road has one notable selling point: the performance of Viggo Mortensen. In his character's fierce determination to live--but also the gentle sighs he lets forth when confronted with, say, his first sip of whisky in years--Mortensen is completely in the moment, and all too human in the post-human world. --Robert Horton

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Someone asked me if I liked The Road, upon watching it. I had no answer. The Road is just one of those films that is too hard to describe. Is the movie good? Well, yes it is-that is a far easier question to answer. I have read the book and must say that the film really does it justice. It is bleak, dreary, utterly depressing and flawlessly acted.

Viggo Mortensen is a man with no name, who, alone with his son (also no name) is attempting to survive what seems to be some sort of apocalypse. We never see what transpired-we only see the aftermath. We are not given a timeline, though you can judge for yourself how long man and son have been attempting to 'live'. Mortensen carries the entire film on his weathered and weary shoulders. I cannot gush enough about his performance-in any film really. But here, you only have to look into his eyes-so full of soul and despair to realise that not only is this man acting, he is really and truly transformed. Just incredible really.

The atmosphere is grainy and desolate, without color of any kind and as you watch, you slowly go mad envisioning what you would do in such a situation. The film features horrors that include cannibalism and at one point, you see the father teach his son how to properly kill himself if anything should ever happen to him. Very disturbing.

By film's end, you are mentally exhausted. This is not a fast-paced film at all. It is purposefully slow-going and I believe that was done with the intent to transport you inside the film itself, and in my mind, it succeeds. After the credits started to roll, I found myself depressed for the rest of the day. This is probably one of the most desolate films I've ever seen, so I would avoid it if you like your films with satisfying ending-because this isn't it.

Agree with and can't really add to what other reviewers have said here. This is serious stuff. It does follow the book very closely and most scenes are exactly as I had envisioned them. It is a very dark, lonely, depressing story, BUT -- with a strong underlying element of hope and love. Specifically, that which makes us human, why we press onward when all seems lost. For what? In this case, a fathers love for his son. The mood expressed is not an especially popular one for a major motion picture and as such, is one of the reasons I bought it on Blu-ray, not because it is something I want to watch repeatedly, but because I have a LOT of respect for and want to support filmmakers that are willing to go against the trend of only producing light, pop-culture, feel-good, easily digestible "product".

I wasn't sure if I should give this movie one star or five...I settled on four........(shaking head)I've never read the book so all I knew about the movie was a guy and his kid survive the end of the world and that was about it.They never say what it was that ended the planet. I'm guessing it was some kind of bomb but all that's left is man.No animals.No crops.No trees.Nothing.

Within the first ten minutes of the movie I was in tears and I knew I'd be in for a rocky ride.I WAS NOT prepared for what this movie threw at me.

Ok, the good.Why would I give the movie five stars?Excellent acting, incredible score.The movie sucks you right in and doesn't let go.The direction is brilliant.The pacing is slow but deliberate and very effective.The movie is a masterpiece except for....

The bad?Why would I give one star?Umm....I don't know how many of you have played the Resident Evil video games but when you stumble upon a big scary mansion looming in the mist, RUN THE OTHER WAY.Chances are said mansion will have scary, icky things in it.And the mansion part of this movie will haunt me for years to come.YUCK!Not that this part of the movie is gory, it kind of is.It's the mental impact of what is happening in the mansion and really all over the Earth.This movie is the darkest, most depressing, desolate thing I have ever seen and I never want to see this movie again.

I settled on four stars.The movie is a masterpiece and one of the scariest movies I've ever seen.It's not even technically a horror movie but that's what kind of impact it had on me.Read more ›

I won't repeat the theme as other reviewers have done this. Though this film does take place in a very bleak and hopeless time as others have mentioned, it still projects hope and displays intense, dedicated love. This is much of what makes the movie as good as it is. In a time when there should be no hope, the father and son hold on to each other. They search for something that they have no right to hope in, a place where they can be safe and fed. It may not even exist, yet they take to the road despite the fact that many others have given up. They choose to hope.

The relationship between the father and son was so well acted that it was very believable. Viggo Mortenson played this father determined to protect his son with such a fierce passion and vulnerability that it was mesmerizing. The actor playing the son was just as fantastic. Vulnerable and innocent, with such trust of the father, reacting to the evil in the world, but still wanting to do good. It was moving.

This was a movie that makes you think. It showed that in desperate circumstances, some will give up and choose death, some will choose evil to survive, others will choose to do no harm while surviving, and still others will risk everything to do good despite what they're up against. It was very true to life.

This film was powerful, fascinating and well done, and I recommend it.

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I think the book's author, Cormac McCarthy, had his cake and ate it, too. That is, from the book (and the film), I kept getting the idea this was post-nuclear ... yet the true likelihood would be the man and boy would have succumbed to radiation sickness years ago. The Village Voice had it right... Read More